2016: A Damnable Year

To me, watching all this crap brings to mind precisely one thing.

Democracy is overrated.

True democracy is better than the alternatives.

False democracy is a sham as bad as the alternatives, and at times worse since it's harder to unmask.

Democracy sucks. It's just that every other form of government sucks more.

Eh, not sure I buy that either. I'd say federalism has a stronger claim to betterness than democracy itself. Relatively speaking.

Society nowadays is incredibly depressing.

Democracy isn't that bad. As I have said before, most of the problems are in the ones who implement it. You can't just give democracy and then expect profit. The transition between giving democracy to profit is as important as the first step. If you mess that up, how can you expect profit? Like you can't open a business and then immediately expect profit.

Federalism is a means of combining governments, but for those governments being combined, we still haven't found anything better than democracy.

(and neither for the federal government itself)

Guys, I think it's important to remember that there's a very good chance that in any system other than democracy, most of us would not be part of the ruling elite holding unchecked power over the masses. Everyone thinks being in an authoritarian or totalitarian regime means an expedited process by which their political desires are more easily realized, but that's simply never the case. They simply lose whatever power they held in the political process, short of outright violence.

The problem isn't with democracy, it's with the societies it's being fitted onto. You can't have a functional democracy where every voter is an ultraconservative thug, and not expect it to be a nightmare.

edited 2nd Sep '16 5:31:45 AM by CrimsonZephyr

I'd say that the most important thing for a healthy democracy is to have a mandatory educational system that heavily emphasizes the importance of institutions like voting and the different branches of government. Such a system should also value debating skills (real debating, not "avoid subjects and rant about whatever") and some training in logic and rethoric.

Democracy is good but it's not sufficient to produce a good government. You also need a) a populace that respects the rule of law and the democratic process above their own tribal differences, and b) some sort of bill of rights that protects the minorities from the majority.

It seems a lot of the democracy problems that arises in the ME comes about because the first thing the majority group/tribe does upon winning their election is fucking over the loser minorities. Which of course forces the minority to protect themselves and retaliate coz they don't want to be fucked over. And then everybody loses their faith in the government and the democratic process.

edited 2nd Sep '16 6:14:16 AM by nightwyrm_zero

Yup. A Liberal Democracy in how it's organized, and a Social Democracy in how it interacts with it's people is probably the best way a government could be.

And you think there's no ruling elite in a democracy? There is: the parties and the oligarchs financially backing them. The only real difference between democracy and dictatorship is that the latter is actually being honest about it.

The more people are involved in policy-making, the more mutually-conflicting interests that clash and generate strife in the exact right place to make things worse off for everyone.

I feel that democracy is more of an implicit thing than an explicit thing, in its natural form. All governments require implicit consent, what most call the social contract. Whether they have formal voting power at the national level or merely at the absolute local level (democracy at the village level has existed for quite a bit longer than at a national or provincial level) is irrelevant so long as the government provides for the society it is so supposed to govern.

It's far from only a Middle Eastern thing, it's a problem in Africa, the Balkens (that's why Bosnia was so decentralised, so that people couldn't do this) and elswhere.

Likewise the reason Tunisia succeeded where other Arab Spring countries failed is because the Tunisian group that won the first election peacefully handed over power after they lost the second election.

edited 2nd Sep '16 9:45:49 AM by Silasw

Yeah, you're right. It's a general problem, but ME was just at the top of my mind.

To be honest, is there a system of government where there is no ruling elites? Heck, even the so-called anarchy have them. Democracy have a lot of issues, but it's still not as bad as dictatorship. Unless you really have no problem with the so-called ruling elites shoot you on the face in broad daylight, go ahead with dictatorship then.

These kinds of attitudes tend to come in cycles. What were experienced now is in no way a new thing. Of course, in the past, the results of such trends have been pretty dire (I'm looking at you, Would War II).

You're saying that as if democracies never do that.

edited 2nd Sep '16 5:30:02 PM by amitakartok

If they're functional democracies, they do it far less than dictatorships. Since, you know, that is what defines both concepts.

edited 2nd Sep '16 5:34:51 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

Yeah, no offense to you or the Russians, but I don't think that you could use Russia as an example of a working democracy. Russia is a lot of things, but democratic isn't one of them.

edited 2nd Sep '16 5:58:35 PM by Advarielle

Not really. Dictatorship is surprisingly okay with most people if you don't give them the idea that they are supposed to change the government at regular intervals. As long as the trains run on time and they don't suffer needlessly, the average human could care less. The advantage of a democracy in a similar situation is that there is a formal mechanism for removal of incompetence, but that same mechanism can also get abused, particularly when demagogues are involved and start promising things they can't deliver.

He's Hungarian...

edited 2nd Sep '16 5:59:10 PM by FFShinra

That one is because I don't want to accidentally offend any Russians, not because I believe that he's one. I'm sorry for the confusion.

Unfortunately, dictatorship tend to mess that up, too. Sure, if you got the right leader, things go right all the time, but that can be said to many other systems of government as well. I just take a look at the past governments that use dictatorship. Let's use Rome. Is Rome a great civilization? No doubt. Is Rome messed up? No doubt. I can admire it, but I sure as hell don't want to live in it.

edited 2nd Sep '16 6:06:19 PM by Advarielle

You say that, but the palace intrigue and coups never really affected anyone outside Rome proper, and the city citizens had Bread and Circuses to keep em busy.

It just mean that everyone is just too distracted to notice the issues than there is no issue, though. The "out of sight, out of mind" rhetoric. I could also use Sudan, but Rome is more interesting.

Dictatorship is simply too easy to be broken and abused for my comfort. Democracy can end up with the same problem as dictatorship, but it has numerous stop gaps to prevent it and the people has more voices. Of course, there is going to be irrational and bad voices mixed in, but it's still far more preferable than one absolute voice. Dictatorship is simply too similar to monarchy for me.

edited 2nd Sep '16 6:46:47 PM by Advarielle

Dictatorship is surprisingly okay with most people if you don't give them the idea that they are supposed to change the government at regular intervals. As long as the trains run on time and they don't suffer needlessly, the average human could care less.

If dictatorships think they can get away with keeping most of the population in misery and hunger, once their spirits are broken enough and they're too weakened/hungry/scared to fight properly, they will do so. Take it from someone living somewhere where the government made an art of staying in power for over a decade by establishing an authocratic regime everyone knows is a disguised dictatorship keeping the flimsiest of appearances, and where the trains definitely don't run in time.

Dictators have a long history of making thousands of people who never were a threat to them, children and civilians of all sorts, to suffer, or to just let them suffer in poverty through negligence while they fill their pockets. That's easier to get away with in a dictatorship since being a dictator means you aren't supposed to answer to anyone over your actions.